This invention relates to a mounting apparatus for releasably mounting attachments on construction and farming vehicles such as bulldozers and tractors.
In the field of the construction and farming vehicles such as bulldozers, tractor shovel, wheel loaders and farming tractors, it has been tried to increase the application ranges of one vehicle by utilizing various attachments. For example, in the case of an excavator of the shovel type, various attachments are provided and the excavator is made versatile by exchange of these attachments so that it can be used as a power shovel, a dragline, a backhoe, a clamshell, a crane and the like.
A prior art construction will now be described with reference to FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings which is a side view of a backhoe mounted on a tractor by means of a known attachment.
Where an attachment is mounted on the vehicle body, as shown in FIG. 1 illustrating mounting of a backhoe B as the attachment on a tractor body A, a mounting bracket 30 is attached to one end of the body, and this mounting bracket 30 is connected to a connecting member 31 of the attachment by means of pins 32. As is shown in FIG. 1, two pins 32 are disposed to extend in the vertical direction and another two pins 32 are disposed to extend in the transverse direction of the car body, namely in the direction headed to the drawing in FIG. 1. The attachment B is fixed by these four pins 32. The load of the attachment in the vertical direction is controlled by the upper two pins. Integration of the attachment with the car body is attempted by such disposition of pins. However, since the weight of the attachment per se is very heavy, in order to simplify mounting of the attachment, according to the conventional technique, one of joint portions mounted on the upper and lower parts of the mounting bracket, namely the upper joint portion of the mounting bracket, is arranged to form a notched portion. While the pin is in the state hung on this notched portion, the pin is inserted into pin holes formed on the lower part of the bracket and the connecting member of the attachment.
According to such conventional technique, however, both the pin holes cannot easily be made so as to register well, and especially when the pin holes or the pin is deformed by the load as a result of long use, insertion of the pin is made more difficult. Moreover, these pins are inserted one by one by hand and hence, a great effort is required for insertion of pins. Therefore, it often happens that insertion of pins cannot be accomplished by one worker.